Edged out

Competition from indoor cultivators around the state and industrial-sized operations is having an impact on small-time marijuana growers

LAYTONVILLE, Calif. — In the mountains of Mendocino County, a middle-aged couple stroll into the cool morning air to plant the year's crop. Andrew grabs a shovel and begins to dig up rich black garden beds while Anna waters the seedlings, beginning a hallowed annual ritual here in marijuana's Emerald Triangle.

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By Joe Mozingo

DailyTidings.com

By Joe Mozingo

Posted Oct. 8, 2012 at 2:00 AM

By Joe Mozingo
Posted Oct. 8, 2012 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

LAYTONVILLE, Calif. — In the mountains of Mendocino County, a middle-aged couple stroll into the cool morning air to plant the year's crop. Andrew grabs a shovel and begins to dig up rich black garden beds while Anna waters the seedlings, beginning a hallowed annual ritual here in marijuana's Emerald Triangle.

In the past, planting day was a time of great expectations, maybe for a vacation in Hawaii or Mexico during the rainy months or a new motor home to make deliveries around the country.

But this year, Andrew and Anna are hoping only that their 50 or so marijuana plants will cover the bills. Since the mid-1990s, the price of outdoor-grown marijuana has plummeted from more than $5,000 a pound to less than $2,000, and even as low as $800.

Battered by competition from indoor cultivators around the state and industrial-sized operations that have invaded the North Coast counties, many of the small-time pot farmers who created the Emerald Triangle fear that their way of life of the past 40 years is coming to an end.

Their once-quiet communities, with their back-to-nature ethos, are being overrun by outsiders carving massive farms out of the forest. Robberies are commonplace now, and the mountains reverberate with the sounds of chainsaws and heavy equipment.

Andrew, 56, and Anna, 52, who agreed to be interviewed only if they would be identified by their middle names, live in a rambling house down a trail through tanoaks and Douglas firs. Their electricity comes from a windmill and solar panels, their water from a spring. They cook on a wood stove and use an outhouse with a composting toilet to conserve water for their crop.

Though they are not complete back-to-the-landers — they have a nice car, satellite TV and Internet access — they keep their gardens relatively small, tucked in the trees throughout their property.

Among their plants, they post their own medical marijuana cards so that if they're raided, it looks as though they're growing under the aegis of state law. But because dispensaries generally prefer the more potent weed grown indoors, they still sell mostly to the black market, where mom-and-pop growers now struggle to compete.

Until recently, life in the hills of Mendocino and Humboldt counties had changed little in the decades since hippies from the San Francisco Bay Area began homesteading here. The pioneers initially grew marijuana for themselves and to make a little money.

Then, in the 1980s, cultivation of high-grade seedless marijuana opened the possibility for big money as it brought a higher premium. Many of the farmers cashed in. But many remained small and discreet to avoid attracting the attention of state and federal agents.

They raised their families where they cultivated. They drove beat-up Subarus and small Toyota pickups, pumped their water from wells and chopped their own firewood.

Even today, small cannabis-funded volunteer fire stations and primary schools are scattered throughout the ranges. And the local radio station, KMUD, announces the sheriff's deputies' movements as part of its public service mandate.

But the liberalization of marijuana laws in the past decade upended the status quo.

From Oakland to the Inland Empire, people began cultivating indoors on an unprecedented scale at the same time that growers from around the world flooded the North Coast because of its remoteness and deep-rooted counterculture.

Now, with the market glutted, people are simply planting ever-larger crops to make up for the drop in price.

Longtime residents complain that the newcomers cut down trees, grade hillsides, divert creeks to irrigate multi-thousand-plant crops, use heavy pesticides and rat poisons, and run giant, smog-belching diesel generators to illuminate indoor grows. They blaze around in Dodge monster trucks and Cadillac Escalades and don't contribute to the upkeep of the roads or schools.

"They just don't care," said Kym Kemp, a teacher and blogger in the mountains of Sohum, as locals call southern Humboldt County. "They're not thinking, 'I want my kids to grow up here.'

"Now there are greenhouses the size of a football field that weren't even there last year," she added.

Kemp said she feels her region is being colonized and worries about the colorful, off-the-grid people that small cannabis patches long supported.

"So many people who live here are just different," she said. "They don't fit in regular society. They couldn't work 9-to-5 jobs. But they've gotten used to raising their kids on middle-class incomes. What are they going to do?"

Tom Evans, 61, a small-time grower in northern Mendocino, said the sense of peace and self-reliance he moved here for 30 years ago is disappearing so fast that he may leave for Mexico.

"It used to be a contest to see who could drive the oldest pickup truck," said Evans, a former Army helicopter mechanic who sports a woolly gray beard and tie-dyed shirt.

"There's just been this huge influx of folks who have money on their mind, instead of love of the land. A lot more gun-toters. A lot more attack dogs."

Evans lives in a small, rented home that generously could be called a fixer-upper. He said he doesn't have a bank account or credit card, and his Honda Passport has more than 300,000 miles. "It's 'make a living, not a killing,' " he said.

His friend, a bear of man who goes by the name Mr. Fuzzy, noted that it's not only outsiders causing problems.

"You know the weird part, these are our kids, too," he said.

It's a recurring lament among longtime growers. Some of their own children are going for the large-scale grows, big money and fancy cars.

The larger irony is that the marijuana pioneers are being pushed to the margins by the legalization they long espoused.

"Ultimately, we worry about Winston or Marlboro getting some land and doing their thing," said Lawrence Ringo, a 55-year-old grower and seed breeder deep in the wilds of Sohum. "We see it time after time in America — big corporations come in and take over."

Ringo saw the 2010 marijuana initiative, Proposition 19, as a ploy by Bay Area activists to dominate the market with giant warehouse grows in Oakland.

He suspects plenty of people still will want high-quality, organically grown cannabis but fears the big business interests will dictate how marijuana gets regulated. Ringo points out that Colorado, the one state that fully regulates marijuana, helped push most growing indoors and place cultivation under the control of large dispensaries.